Work Text:
It’s a perfect night. Qing Jing Peak is silent, Shen Qingqiu’s tea is at the right temperature, and the book in his hands could be better, but at least it is not too bad, so he’s not complaining yet.
A perfect night, indeed.
For a few really nice, relaxing minutes, Shen Qingqiu focuses on reading and enjoying sips of fragrant tea, but the peace never lasts long. He should know that by now already.
Shen Qingqiu’s mood sours when he hears the distinctive and extremely annoying noise of someone banging on his door. He waits for a moment for whoever is on the other side to get tired and go away, but he is not that lucky. If anything, the knocking becomes even more intense.
The next time Shen Qingqiu sees Shang Qinghua, he’s going to give him a piece of his mind for not getting rid of people who like to bang on doors in his shitty novel.
With a sigh, Shen Qingqiu leaves the comfort of his warm bed and slides back into his outer robe, grumpily tying it at his waist. Then he walks to the door, repeating to himself that his night won’t get ruined because of this, and opens it without enthusiasm.
Liu Qingge stands in front of him with a hand raised like he is willing to keep knocking until the door shatters. His robes are stained red but that’s not surprising at all, not when he’s standing next to a dead beast as tall as himself with a big horn in the middle of its head.
It appears that he has dragged it across the cobblestone path if the blood stains all over the place that make it look like a murder scene are anything to go by.
“A gift for you,” Liu Qingge says, simply. Like he doesn’t show up every now and then at Shen Qingqiu’s door with a new dead beast every time. “In return for the tea and mung bean cakes you sent to Bai Zhan Peak.”
Shen Qingqiu is usually more willing to play along with Liu Qingge, but tonight he feels like crying. He only wanted to enjoy a nice stress-free night for once!
“It’s an impressive beast, but it wasn’t necessary, Liu-shidi.” Shen Qingqiu forces himself to smile a tiny bit, it’s probably more an awkward grimace than a smile.
Liu Qingge nods, but Shen Qingqiu knows his shidi is too stubborn and will find an even bigger beast to kill the next time he visits and needs to give something in return for Shen Qingqiu’s gifts.
The silence stretches afterward. Liu Qingge takes a cloth to wipe the blood off his hands and then, off his sword too while Shen Qingqiu starts feeling awkward by just standing there at the threshold with the ugly, dead beast still at his feet.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” Shen Qingqiu offers when he can’t stand the silence anymore.
“Sure,” Liu Qingge mutters, abandoning the task of cleaning his sword in favor of following Shen Qingqiu inside.
Shen Qingqiu takes one final glimpse at the beast and closes the door. He is asking Ming Fan to take care of it first thing in the morning.
“There’s a water basin over there,” Shen Qingqiu points out, trailing behind Liu Qingge. “Please use it to clean yourself.”
The last thing Shen Qingqiu wants in his home is blood stains. Those are too hard to remove even when his disciples do their best at scrubbing.
Shen Qingqiu sits at the table and places a clean porcelain cup for Liu Qingge on the opposite side. He refills his own cup for good measure and waits.
Liu Qingge shows up not long after and serves a cup of tea for himself. His hands and face are clean, but there’s not much he can do about his bloodstained robes. It’s fine, most of the stains are already dry and maybe, if Shen Qingqiu tries really, really hard, he can pretend he doesn’t care about that.
For a moment, Shen Qingqiu is tempted to ask the reason why Liu Qingge envisioned that he’d like the beast he hunted for him, but he is afraid of Liu Qingge proposing he should eat it as he has done with some of his previous gifts that are not edible at all.
“So,” Shen Qingqiu tries to start a different kind of conversation. “Are you leaving again to hunt anytime soon?”
“Do you want me to hunt something for you?” Liu Qingge asks without missing a beat. “I can hunt something else for you.”
“No! No, that won’t be necessary,” Shen Qingqiu explains. Perhaps on another occasion, he will ask Liu Qingge to hunt a cool monster for him, but right now he has enough with the one on the other side of his door. “I was wondering, that’s all.”
“I’ll spend a couple of weeks in Bai Zhan Peak making sure that no one has slacked while I was away.” That is Liu Qingge’s way of saying that he will be busy battling everyone.
“Of course,” Shen Qingqiu mutters. “Why did I even ask?”
Liu Qingge empties his cup and refills it to the brim. Shen Qingqiu’s eyes roam over him, but there’s not a lot he can do besides that, not now that his initial plans are ruined. Liu Qingge looks handsome in the dim light of the room, and Shen Qingqiu gulps before taking a sip of his own cup just to find out that the tea has gotten too lukewarm for his taste.
There’s nothing wrong or remotely romantic about acknowledging that his fellow Peak Lord is gorgeous, right?
Liu Qingge lowers his cup and rolls his shoulders. The fabric of his robes shifts, allowing Shen Qingqiu to notice that maybe Liu Qingge is not in perfect shape as he expected.
“What happened to your arm?” Shen Qingqiu asks, having an inkling that he won’t like the answer.
Liu Qingge’s eyes travel downward and his eyebrows twitch when he notices the gash on his sleeve that extends to his skin.
“The beast put on a good fight and injured me with its horn,” Liu Qingge explains and takes a sip of tea.
“Perhaps you should’ve gotten that checked out with Mu-shidi.”
“It’s late and not a serious wound. It can wait until later.”
Shen Qingqiu is not sure about that. What if it’s a deep cut and the bleeding only gets worse? What if it gets infected and it evolves into some incurable, weird disease?
It’s indeed late and Mu Qingfang is either asleep, sprawled over his writing table, or drunk after a long day, most likely not in the best condition to treat a wound.
Shen Qingqiu makes up his mind quickly. As a good shixiong, he can’t let his shidi die, and as someone who wants to live, he specifically can’t let Liu Qingge die before he can protect him from the wrath of his former disciple.
“Fine.” He stands up. “If you’re not going to Qian Cao Peak to get patched up, I’ll patch you up.”
“It’s just a scratch.”
“It’s still bleeding,” Shen Qingqiu points out, leaning closer to Liu Qingge to take a better look at the gash, “and if that doesn’t change soon, your blood will stain my floor.”
“It’s not—”
“You can’t say no,” Shen Qingqiu argues. “Friends help friends, and you always help me with my meridians, so I’ll help you with this.”
Shen Qingqiu walks to the other side of the room and retrieves a small wooden box filled with miscellaneous medical supplies.
“Take off your robes,” Shen Qingqiu orders. “You know, to see how bad it is, but no pressure,” he adds, making it clear that there’s no other reason for him to want to see Liu Qingge half-naked.
Liu Qingge groans, silently refusing.
“Liu-shidi, how am I supposed to see the wound if you don’t take off your clothes?” Shen Qingqiu tries again.
Liu Qingge doesn’t seem to be especially happy, but he complies and discards all layers of his robes until he is only wearing his white trousers. Like that, Shen Qingqiu can finally take a good look at his strong torso and arms without any fabric getting in the way—and oh, he can look at his injured bicep too. That’s what he wanted to do in the first place.
It’s simultaneously better and worse than Shen Qingqiu expected—better because it’s not a very deep cut and worse because it’s a longer cut than he would’ve preferred, and a fine trickle of blood is coming out of it. Better because Liu Qingge’s muscles are nice and perfectly defined, worse because what the hell is he thinking about now?
Shen Qingqiu is no doctor, but he can take a guess and deduce that if Liu Qingge doesn’t stop bleeding, he will need stitches. He sighs with defeat. He just wanted to have a peaceful night!
“Do you think you’ll need stitches?” Shen Qingqiu asks, hoping that after a lifetime of fighting and getting injured, Liu Qingge would know more about it.
He also hopes that Liu Qingge would say no because he has no idea how to suture and would rather not learn.
Still, Shen Qingqiu rummages through the contents of the box and gulps when he finds a needle and some thread among the medical supplies. He really doesn’t want to do it!
“I don’t think so,” Liu Qingge finally replies, glancing down at the cut one more time. “I’ve had worse.”
“Great!” Shen Qingqiu smiles and Liu Qingge stares at him. “I mean that you won’t need stitches, not that you’ve had worse. Chill.”
“Do what you must and let’s get over this.”
“Then I’ll clean all the blood first.”
Shen Qingqiu rushes to open a cabinet and take a jar of rice wine he stored in there for emergencies, also known as boring evenings when he doesn’t want to meditate in solitude, but has to pretend he loves it.
Just like he has seen in countless movies before, Shen Qingqiu soaks a cloth in alcohol and then presses it firmly against Liu Qingge’s bicep. Liu Qingge hisses and moves away.
“Don’t—” It’s all he says through gritted teeth.
“I need to clean this,” Shen Qingqiu chases after him and presses—or rather slams—the cloth against Liu Qingge’s arm again.
Liu Qingge lets out a sound that might be a gasp and takes a firm hold of Shen Qingqiu’s wrist. Shen Qingqiu takes a shaky breath. Liu Qingge can shatter his entire arm easily if he wants to, but he doesn’t.
For a moment, they stare at each other in silence. Liu Qingge doesn’t push him away or marches out of the room, and Shen Qingqiu can feel his warm breath on his face.
“Um.” Shen Qingqiu doesn’t know what to say as an uncomfortable blush that makes his face burn, rises up to his cheeks.
Liu Qingge doesn’t wait for him to add anything else and drops Shen Qingqiu’s arm.
“Don’t do that,” he grumbles, focusing on the wall rather than on Shen Qingqiu’s face.
“Then I will be gentle for you, Liu-shidi,” Shen Qingqiu tells him, surprising himself when the words come out of his mouth with more sincerity and less sarcasm than he intended.
And gentle he is. Shen Qingqiu doesn’t slam the cloth against Liu Qingge’s bicep a second time. He soaks another cloth in clean water and uses it to clean off the blood. Then, he cleans the cut and its surroundings with alcohol making sure to do it as softly as he can.
Liu Qingge is clearly not comfortable, but he doesn’t complain or jerk away again.
When the cut is clean, it looks way less worrying than Shen Qingqiu expected, and the bleeding has even stopped now! That’s great!
There’s a jar of some herbal ointment in the box and Shen Qingqiu dips his fingers into it to take a generous amount that he spreads all over Liu Qingge’s bicep, definitely not thinking about the firmness of Liu Qingge’s muscles under his fingertips.
Shen Qingqiu takes a bandage and with the best of his null medical abilities, he wraps it around Liu Qingge’s arm. Tightly but not too tightly, he supposes, while he does his best to tie the ends in some way that will keep the bandage in place.
“It’s done,” he announces, patting Liu Qingge’s shoulder a couple of times. “It wasn’t so bad, was it? But you should go to visit Mu-shidi first thing tomorrow anyway.”
“It’ll be healed by then.” Yes, with Liu Qingge’s high level of cultivation that’s highly likely.
“Come on, I just did my best to patch you up! The least you can do is do as I tell you.”
“Fine.”
“Good.” Shen Qingqiu closes the medical supply box, and yawns, noticing the tension on his shoulders and lower back.
Now he understands why Mu Qingfang gets exhausted so often.
Liu Qingge slips into the inner layer of his robes that was fortunate enough to remain stainless, while Shen Qingqiu moves to sit in a more comfortable position, and perhaps, he is too tired to think straight but dares to rest his head on Liu Qingge’s shoulder.
He is not pushed away and even feels Liu Qingge relaxing under him.
“Don’t get injured again,” Shen Qingqiu mumbles. “It was tiring to patch you up.”
“I won’t,” Liu Qingge promises.
“You better hold onto that.”